Bosnia, Serbia Ready Flood Damage Bills For Donors

EU officials and representatives of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia are meeting in Paris to discuss the cost of repairing the damage to the two countries, as they grapple with the legacy of May's disastrous floods.

The meeting forms part of preparations for the donors’ conference that will be held in Brussels on July 16, which is expected to gather EU member states, Western Balkan countries, the key donor states, major financial institutions and the UN.

“We will present our preliminary damage assessment report to potential donors and then they will have time until the Brussels conference to discuss whether will they be able to help us and how,” Marko Blagojevic, director of the Serbian Office for Reconstruction and Flood Relief, told BIRN, before his trip to Paris.

Blagojevic said Serbian representatives had already talked to some potential donors about aid requirements, but did not wish to speculate on how much cash the Brussels conference might raise.

“The important thing about the conference is also that it will draft an outline of what we have to do and which funds we will be able to access to finance those works,” Blagojevic said.

A damage assessment report that the Serbian government adopted on July 7 put the total cost of repairing the damage to Serbia at about €1.5 billion. This includes the damage done to homes, infrastructure, agriculture and to educational and other facilities.

Serbian authorities say 485 houses were completely destroyed by the deluge while 12,000 hectares of land will not be usable for agricultural production next season.

A preliminary damage assessment in Bosnia put the total cost of the damage to this country at about €2 billion.

The preliminary report...